Evolution?

juvenissun · Oct 14, 2008

Bombila said:
TheGnome, it is ridiculous. Even reading and understanding some of the basic material presented to him in this thread alone, let alone several dozen others, would make juvenissun a more knowledgeable man. and salient points wouldn't go whooshing over his head as they do.

I cannot fathom arguing about something I hadn't a clue about without at least trying to get up to half speed. You will never see me arguing about astrophysics or chemistry because I know very little about either; I just read those threads, ask for clarification sometimes, and make an effort to learn something. It's free knowledge. people pay good money to learn these things.

You are too afraid and are unnecessary humble. You DO have the capability to question anything you do not know much and the question would be totally legitimate and solid. That is what students learn in college under the title: Critical Thinking. Unfortunately, only very few can learn it well at undergraduate level. For example, I think I can ask you pretty hard question in art, if given me a chance. Challenge the expert is what I like to do the most.

juvenissun · Oct 14, 2008

TheGnome said:
I never did get a good response to my post:

http://christianforums.com/showpost.php?p=48982014&postcount=528

You're not going to respond to it as you hand-waived it away for your previous response.

Microevolution is evolution within a species. That's any evolution. Genes will always change the morphology of an organism, but sequences may not. Noncoding, nonregulatory sequences can evolve. Morphology can even change and have absolutely no different function. Microevolution encompasses all of these.

Macroevolution is simply that leap to a new species. Macroevolution is a result of microevolutionary changes.

Humans are not evolving into another species because of the inventions of the ship and the airplane. There is just too much mixing of genes. Populations evolve, however. Closed off human populations are evolving, after all, can't you tell the difference between a Japanese man and an English man? As a species, we're still not that much different from each other in terms of overall function, but sometimes you can find certain traits to particular groups of people. Most white Americans can digest lactose even until adulthood because they contain a lactase gene. I'm moderately lactose intolerant, but as it turns out, a small percentage of Italians can break down lactose, and I am mostly Italian by descent--explaining why I'm an exception to the majority. This answers the question that humans are "microevolving."

Many of these questions can be answered by opening a general biology textbook. This is ridiculous.

Example of micro-evolution: different type of cats, dogs, etc. May be something like compare the paw of a Retriever and a Huskie.

Of course it is caused by gene change. But the discussion on the mechanism of gene change is outside the scope of micro-evolution.

TheGnome · Oct 14, 2008

juvenissun said:
Example of micro-evolution: different type of cats, dogs, etc. May be something like compare the paw of a Retriever and a Huskie.

Of course it is caused by gene change. But the discussion on the mechanism of gene change is outside the scope of micro-evolution.

Microevolution is evolution within a species. This encompasses the differences of paws among dogs as well as differences in microsatellites among two populations of a species.

You seem to have a problem with molecular genetics and how it's applied to evolution. Before using molecular genetic techniques in population genetics, they used to analyze allozymes, or alternative versions of the same protein, among populations. I hope you know by now, but an allele is a variant of a gene. Allozymes are variants of a particular protein that do the same function and is encoded by the same gene, therefore allozymes can be treated as alleles. The function can be 100% the same, but the amino acid composition can be slightly different. Molecular genetic techniques are far superior, and allow biologists to know differences among populations even deeper than using allozymes. After all, evolution occurs at all levels.

You can't use molecular techniques on the larger scale because there is just too much information to deal with. There is a field of genetics called quantitative genetics, and quantitative geneticists use heritable morphological features for their purposes. An example of quantitive genetics is examining the various patterns of the fruit fly wing, as the pattern is inherited. It's not possible to examine all of the genes on a molecular level in any meaningful way, at least not with current technology, therefore using technology to quantify the patterns of the wing allow an easier to digest method of analyze various genes at once for your analysis. A competitive field right now is using quantitative genetics to see if you can determine evolution of certain structures under certain conditions ahead of time. I don't know very much about it, but what I've heard sounds pretty interesting.

Evolutionary genetics is a big field all by itself, encompassing population genetics, phylogenetics, quantiative genetics, and genome evolution. The mechanism of gene change is SOLELY in the scope of microevolution, and is not arbitrary. It's a collection of those gene changes OVER TIME that can lead to macroevolution.

I still have no idea what you're trying to argue.

Bombila · Oct 14, 2008

juvenissun said:
You are too afraid and are unnecessary humble. You DO have the capability to question anything you do not know much and the question would be totally legitimate and solid. That is what students learn in college under the title: Critical Thinking. Unfortunately, only very few can learn it well at undergraduate level. For example, I think I can ask you pretty hard question in art, if given me a chance. Challenge the expert is what I like to do the most.

I do question - how do you think I ended up being an agnostic?

A question can have qualities. The more you know about a subject, the more complex a question you can ask, and the more you will gain from the answer. When you ask a complex question out of no knowledge, the answer will tell you very little, even if it is the right answer. If I don't know the stars are suns, and ask how far away they are, the answer will make little sense, as how could one see such little pinpricks if they are so many billion km. away?

When I posted the links to simple short articles on Hox genes, it was to help you, because you were asking questions that really required you know more than you do. The answers you were getting were going over your head because there was too much you didn't know underpinning your question. Sometimes just a little extra knowledge can boost understanding a great deal.

You can ask me an art question whenever you like, but be warned, my views are anti-establishment, by which I mean, not aligned with the mid twentieth century version of art philosophy which many still adhere to, especially when it comes to art history.

Tomk80 · Oct 15, 2008

juvenissun said:
Example of micro-evolution: different type of cats, dogs, etc. May be something like compare the paw of a Retriever and a Huskie.

Other example of micro-evolution: the resistance to DDT that evolved in mosquitos. This has never been accompanied by changes in appearance, but it is micro-evolution.

Of course it is caused by gene change. But the discussion on the mechanism of gene change is outside the scope of micro-evolution.

Since, as you have already admitted multiple times, micro-evolutionary changes are caused by gene changes, gene changes are included in the definition.

Of course, the mechanism of those changes is indeed not part of the definition, nor does it need to be. All we need to know is that the genetics of the organism change and as you have admitted, that is something we do know.

Naraoia · Oct 15, 2008

juvenissun said:
But micro-evolution emphasizes morphological change. Isn't it? If the morphology does not change, then there is no evolution according to micro-evolution.

Wherever did you get that? I hope it wasn't from a biologist. Human lactose tolerance is as much an example of (micro)evolution as the rise of dark peppered moths.

Naraoia · Oct 15, 2008

juvenissun said:
So, if we could not study the genetic change of dinosaurs, then we can not say anything about the evolution of dinosaurs. Is that what you said?

I highly doubt that's what he said. There are so many things you can't study directly. Does that mean you can't say anything about past climate change or black holes?

Naraoia · Oct 15, 2008

juvenissun said:
If I am right, then you (anyone) go ahead and try to relate the morphology change of dinosaur to their genetic change. I bet on your failure because you simply can not do it.

You are aware that you're basically saying criminal investigation doesn't work, right?

Tomk80 · Oct 15, 2008

Naraoia said:
You are aware that you're basically saying criminal investigation doesn't work, right?

Well, in a certain sense he is right, isn't he. I mean, we do not know that genetic changes underly the morphological change we see. Maybe genetics is a new evolutionary development of the last 30 years. Before that, evolution happened by the hybridization of silly buggers, who knows. But when we started to be able to discover DNA, the silly buggers magically transformed into DNA.

Of course, when you subsequently state that "of course it is caused by genetic change", it shows that you're doing nothing but trying to play some semantic game. If you accept that morphological change is the result of genetic change, than you logically accept that the morphological change we observe in the fossil record is caused by genetic change. We will never find out what kind of change happened exactly, which region in the genome mutated where, but that is irrelevant.

Perhaps a different way of looking at this, is approaching it from the other direction. Apparantly Juvenissun is obsessed with paleontology and the fact that paleontology cannot assess genetic change. But now comes the logical error. Instead of accepting that paleontology cannot assess all instances of evolution. But instead of looking at this for what it is, namely the inability of the instrument to assess all instances of evolution, Juvenissun concludes that because the instrument cannot all instances of evolution evolution did not happen. There must be a name for this logical fallacy, but if there is not, we should name it.

In times we see stasis in the geological record. But this does not necessarily mean that evolution, even macro-evolution, did not happen. As we have seen in this thread, even some instances of macro-evolution are not accompanied by morphological change. Hence, even if we see a period of stasis in the fossil record, in reality this might have been macro-evolution.

Paleontologists (arbitrarily) decide whether speciation (macro-evolution) has taken place by the amount of physiological change they observe, because that is the best they can do. They distinguish between micro- and macro-evolution based on the morphological characteristics of the organisms. This does not mean that they disregard that micro-evolution and even macro-evolution may have taken place without morphological change, rather it means that they accept that they cannot detect such instances if they happened. They accept that the distinction they make is based on the imperfection of the instrument rather than on what happened in reality.

edited to add: perhaps the real issue here is attributing too much weight to paleontologic evidence in comparison with other lines of evidence?

ChordatesLegacy · Oct 15, 2008

juvenissun said:
I talked HIGH in geology.

No you do not; you talk bull excrement on all aspects of earth science. Nothing more than I would expect from a creationist not educated in geology.

juvenissun · Oct 15, 2008

TheGnome said:
You can't use molecular techniques on the larger scale because there is just too much information to deal with. There is a field of genetics called quantitative genetics, and quantitative geneticists use heritable morphological features for their purposes. An example of quantitive genetics is examining the various patterns of the fruit fly wing, as the pattern is inherited. It's not possible to examine all of the genes on a molecular level in any meaningful way, at least not with current technology, therefore using technology to quantify the patterns of the wing allow an easier to digest method of analyze various genes at once for your analysis. A competitive field right now is using quantitative genetics to see if you can determine evolution of certain structures under certain conditions ahead of time. I don't know very much about it, but what I've heard sounds pretty interesting.

...

I still have no idea what you're trying to argue.

Thanks for the introduction of term: quantitative genetics.

My argument in this thread, can now be read as: quantitative genetics is not appropriate to be used on the study of bacteria, because bacteria seldom change their morphology.

juvenissun · Oct 15, 2008

Bombila said:
I do question - how do you think I ended up being an agnostic?

A question can have qualities. The more you know about a subject, the more complex a question you can ask, and the more you will gain from the answer. When you ask a complex question out of no knowledge, the answer will tell you very little, even if it is the right answer. If I don't know the stars are suns, and ask how far away they are, the answer will make little sense, as how could one see such little pinpricks if they are so many billion km. away?

When I posted the links to simple short articles on Hox genes, it was to help you, because you were asking questions that really required you know more than you do. The answers you were getting were going over your head because there was too much you didn't know underpinning your question. Sometimes just a little extra knowledge can boost understanding a great deal.

You can ask me an art question whenever you like, but be warned, my views are anti-establishment, by which I mean, not aligned with the mid twentieth century version of art philosophy which many still adhere to, especially when it comes to art history.

When one do not know much about a subject, one question won't help much. But 10 sequential questions may start the learning pretty well. When you get an over-the-head type of answer back, it is critical to extract basic information from the answer and continue the questioning. This is usually a difficult part for many people.

I like the attitude of anti-establishment. However, in most cases, that will also leads me eventually to appreciate more on the establishment.

juvenissun · Oct 15, 2008

Naraoia said:
Wherever did you get that? I hope it wasn't from a biologist. Human lactose tolerance is as much an example of (micro)evolution as the rise of dark peppered moths.

OK, you are correcting my understanding to the definitional content of micro-evolution. I accept it with a serious preservation. I still think genetic content is an over-stretching in the definition of micro-evolution.

Basically, my logic goes this way: Macro-evolution is talking about speciation. And morphological variation within a species is addressed by micro-evolution. That is IT. And there are A LOT studies to do just go by this definition. To add genetics to it is an unnecessary overburden to the term.

juvenissun · Oct 15, 2008

Naraoia said:
You are aware that you're basically saying criminal investigation doesn't work, right?

Yes. OJ's first trial is an example.
The idea of a perfect crime is saying just that.

Tomk80 · Oct 15, 2008

juvenissun said:
OK, you are correcting my understanding to the definitional content of micro-evolution. I accept it with a serious preservation. I still think genetic content is an over-stretching in the definition of micro-evolution.

Basically, my logic goes this way: Macro-evolution is talking about speciation. And morphological variation within a species is addressed by micro-evolution. That is IT. And there are A LOT studies to do just go by this definition. To add genetics to it is an unnecessary overburden to the term.

It is not overburdening it. This is because a necessary precondition for something to be evolution in the first place, is that it is passed down to the next generation. That is why the genetic aspect is important in the definition. If a change is not genetic, it is not passed on to the next generation. If it is not passed on to the next generation, it is not evolution.

Blayz · Oct 15, 2008

Tomk80 said:
It is not overburdening it. This is because a necessary precondition for something to be evolution in the first place, is that it is passed down to the next generation. That is why the genetic aspect is important in the definition. If a change is not genetic, it is not passed on to the next generation. If it is not passed on to the next generation, it is not evolution.

Umm...you seem to be missing epigenetics Tom. I am surprised your comments didn't summon Dad's water fleas. I discovered last week that methylation is a symptom, not a cause, of silencing, which was a bit of a shock.

Naraoia · Oct 15, 2008

Blayz said:
Umm...you seem to be missing epigenetics Tom. I am surprised your comments didn't summon Dad's water fleas. I discovered last week that methylation is a symptom, not a cause, of silencing, which was a bit of a shock.

Reference please! Sounds like something I'd want to read.

Tomk80 · Oct 15, 2008

Blayz said:
Umm...you seem to be missing epigenetics Tom.

Hehe, perhaps. I haven't read up on it too much lately, so what I know of it is a bit hazy (about 2 years ago hazy). But as far as I remember, epigenetics is a change in gene expression, but not of the underlying DNA. It can be passed on to a next generation, but isn't permanent in the sense that the next generation can loose it again and thus revert to the previous condition if the enabling mechanisms behind the gene expression are lifted. Perhaps if I ammend what I said to "passed on to the next generations"?

I am surprised your comments didn't summon Dad's water fleas. I discovered last week that methylation is a symptom, not a cause, of silencing, which was a bit of a shock.

Do I look very dumb if I cannot place your comment here? I generally evade threads with dad in them. Threads with AV in them I can bear up to a certain amount, but with AV the insanity goes into such extreme overdrive that I cannot feel anything other than pity for the guy. I keep wondering what they did to him?

Tomk80 · Oct 15, 2008

Naraoia said:
Reference please! Sounds like something I'd want to read.

Wikipedia is bound to have an article on it. From what I remember it's becoming quite an active field of research with some promising results.

Tomk80 · Oct 15, 2008

Hey, there even a blog about it.

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